Yeng Pway Ngon 英培安 (1947-2021)
CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
始终贯彻的“存在”与“执拗” [The Persistence of Existence and Tenacity]
Written by Ang Jin Yong
Translated by Tan Ying Xuan and Jonathan Chan
Dated 28 Nov 2023
英培安是新加坡文化奖（Cultural Medallion）得主，更是新加坡华文文坛“现代主义”的先锋之一。英的出版众多，早期多写诗、杂文和短篇小说，中后期专注于长篇小说，为新加坡打开了长篇叙事的新格局。本文将试从他出版过的四本诗集种，从中试论他诗风上的转变。
若第一本《手术台上》（英培安1968，以下简称《手》）代表了诗人“入世”的关切与批判，那《石头》（英培安2020，以下简称《石》）则是“出世”后的沉着、温柔与重新探索。表现手法上，历经多年锤炼与生活的敲击必然会不同，但阅读英的诗时，总能感受到他身为知识分子的一种执拗与“择善而固执”的文人风骨。
对城市人的批评
《手》作为英的第一本诗集，满满是年轻诗人对于社会、生活尖锐的批判，也反映出了该时代的许多问题。阅读《手》，能清楚感受到年轻诗人的内心是孤独苦闷的，还夹带着一种支离破碎的“自我”，控诉着现代城市文明的“罪恶”（張松建2017：56）。诗集中，同名作〈手术台上〉写道：“把自己升上所有的电梯／把自己泊入所有的停车场／打招呼、拍肩膀、用力地握手、牵动嘴唇笑／谎言传染在齿缝，骄傲插进鼻孔／热情印刷在每张商业注册的脸皮上／我们用红灯停车，用计算机算钱／唯独语言不是情感交通的符号”（英培安1968：67）描写了城市人的冷漠与虚伪，表面上打招呼、握手、对彼此微笑，但是他们的“热情”是“商业”的，因此人际关系都是建立在这种虚假的符号上，无法真诚地坦诚相待。接着，“我们生存，我们是一个节庆，一个假日／我们生存，我们是没有季候的风，是盲目的云／我们生存，我们佯装快乐，佯装忧郁／以及没有什么叫做甜蜜”（英培安 1968：66），以宏观视角将城市人傲慢却渺小的生活姿态给表达出来，人们渺小得如同文件里的数据，没有需要被辨识的价值，而庸庸碌碌地生活，就只是为了期待假日的到来，一切显得如此“盲目”、“佯装”，失去了生活“存在”的价值。
逐渐温和的笔锋
《无根的弦》（英培安1974，以下简称《弦》）是英培安的第二本诗集。作者的风格已从锐利的直露变得较为温和，但依然蕴藏着他一贯的批判气息。如同名作〈无根的弦〉內写的：“告诉你我多寂寞／（那时是黄昏）／我伴着／一只异乡的白鸽／细读一则大标题的国际新闻／骤然想起尘封在书房里的史记／诗韵／和甲骨文”（英培安1974：45），似乎预判了华文在新加坡的没落，令他感伤和哀叹。然而他不畏的精神、与引领的勇气，促使他继续往这方向迈进。〈儒生行之二〉写道：“雾，重重的雾／在我驻守的滩头涌起／我们都不是善战的／兵卒，投枪锈了／匕首荒芜／偶尔还疲惫，颓唐地／在饥饿时零售脊骨／偶尔有／散发着腐朽的／气味，来自携于身旁的／书画琴棋” （英培安1974：61），他以“在饥饿时零售脊骨”来寓意没有骨气，讽刺那些不愿意坚持、宁愿丢掉自己“根”的人；以“散发着腐朽气味”的“书画琴棋”来象征被忽视的华文。诗的后面还写道：“该来的总会来的／虽然仍是儒生，仍是书画琴棋。／而我们已不再是一条惶惑的河了，我们是／奔向大海的足迹／因为是寒夜／我们沉默着／把燃烧的火焰／静静的藏起” （英培1974：62），以示诗人仍然愿意在浓雾中前进，尽管不能改变大环境，但是火焰只是藏起，而不是熄灭。
《日常生活》（英培安2004）出版于2004年，时隔30年，诗人对批判的态度依旧，可见诗人保有其固执，但是笔下的陵角已经几乎磨平，也开始运用隐喻来表达心中的批判。诗人除了对华文有很强烈的执着之外，对自由也抱着很大的期望。〈禁止的游戏〉内写道：“你是活在蛋中，在这设计好的／堡垒里，在它提供给你的天空／千万别思索它的实质／它的内容或结构。”（英培安2004：43） 诗以“蛋”为意象，代表一个极度受管制、封闭的世界。人活在这“蛋”里面，不允许任何思考和成长。诗后面还写道：“因为蛋的形状／是至善至美的形状。所以／不能思考蛋壳的实质／不能聆听蛋外的啁啾／不能，不能，绝对不能存有／长出羽毛、眼睛、耳朵、鼻子、嘴巴／诸如此类／荒谬的意图这是危险的游戏／是绝对禁止的”（英培安2004：43），诗人用“荒谬的意图”、“危险的游戏”与“绝对禁止的”寓意失去的自由。又如〈习惯〉内言：“如果你习惯这精致贞洁的剧场，习惯／编导给你的性高潮／与华丽的乳房”，那么你就能够“看见头顶上有一大片抒情的蓝天”（英培安2004：59），每个人只要把自己当成一个演员，好好接受导演的安排，那么你就能前途无量；反之，“你的虚妄是你沸腾的热血／你的热血／是你最大的／哀伤”（英培安2004：60），如果你不愿意好好接受安排，那你的前路将会铺满荆棘。
思考寻常生命里的无常
《石》则是诗人生前最后一部诗集，诗风保有早前的风骨，但开始倾向于抒情、自我探索，不再通过“批判”的口吻来表达内心的感受，阅读起来沉着却舒服，对于生命的无常有了非常深切的思考与体悟。（张曦娜2021）。例如同名诗作〈石头〉写道“我不孤独。我有林木／苍空、骄阳、星月、暴雨／以及一起体验快乐与艰辛的／你”（英培安2020）除了表达自己感谢妻子多年来的陪伴与支持，其实也感慨自己过去几十年的经历，五味杂陈，喜忧参半，有种“放下执念”的深长意味。
〈石头〉的最后一段准备总结时，写道：“没有人了解我与你／天长地久的爱／肌肤的亲密／没有人理解／日夜紧贴着你对抗这荒谬／是我们存在的／意义”（英培安2020：26）仍然看到了那位曾经热血沸腾，初出茅庐的诗人身影，保留了一份知识分子坚守的底线，以及荒谬生活的批判。他不再要求发声批判，诗人晚年时，希望通过自己热爱了一生的“文字”，给予“自己”和身边所爱的最坚定的一份礼物。
小结
英培安是新加坡文坛重要的作家，出版也十分丰富，不难看出，即使诗集橫跨数十余年，英依旧是那位对人情世事富有浓厚人文关怀与批判，并通过孤独的“自我”与写作不断地探索去重新定义“存在”这回事。不论是初出茅庐，写下满腔愤慨的《手》的诗人，还是晚年通过《石》来传情与回顾，英培安一直都会是新加坡文学史里闪耀的星光。
参考资料（按姓名拼音排列）
张松建。2017。〈抒情的寓言——英培安、希尼尔的现代诗〉，张松建《后殖民时代的文化政治——新马文学六论》，新加坡：八方文化创作室，页56。
张曦娜。2021年5月28日。〈爽朗的笑声 孤独的创作者——流苏谈英培安与其作品〉，见《联合早报》（数码版）：https://www.zaobao.com.sg/lifestyle/culture/story20210528-1149952。（见于2023年10月17日）
英培安。1968。《手术台上》，新加坡：草根书室。（再版）
英培安。1974。《无根的弦》，新加坡：草根书室。
英培安。2004。《日常生活》，新加坡：草根书室。
英培安。2020。《石头》，新加坡：城市书房。
Introduction
A Cultural Medallion recipient and pioneer of literary modernism in Singapore, Yeng Pway Ngon was a prolific writer with multiple publications to his name. Yeng began his early literary career with poetry, essays, and short stories and moved on to novels in the later stage of his career, during which he transformed the local literary landscape for long-form narrative. This essay will explore the evolution of his poetic style across the four poetry collections he has published: On the Operating Table (1968), Rootless String (1974), Everyday Life (2004), and Stone (2020).
If On the Operating Table represents Yeng’s concern and criticism toward "entering the world", then Stone represents calmness, gentleness and rediscovery after "leaving the world". While time and practice refined and tempered Yeng’s poetic style, a reading of Yeng’s poems reveals the presence of a constant essence in all his poems—an intellectual’s unyielding tenacity and an unbending nature that leans towards goodness and beauty.
Yeng’s Critique of Urban Living
The pages of Yeng’s first poetry collection, On the Operating Table, are filled with a young poet’s harsh disapproval of society and life as well as the many issues of the times. When reading the collection, we are given a glimpse of then-young Yeng’s true self—one who was lonely and frustrated, whose “identity” was fragmented, and who railed against the “evils” of a modern city lifestyle (Zhang, The Cultural Politics in the Postcolonial Era, 2017). The anthology’s titular poem exposes the urbanite’s indifference and pretence:
把自己升上所有的电梯
把自己泊入所有的停车场
打招呼、拍肩膀、用力地握手、牵动嘴唇笑
谎言传染在齿缝，骄傲插进鼻孔
热情印刷在每张商业注册的脸皮上
我们用红灯停车，用计算机算钱
唯独语言不是情感交通的符号[Take every elevator up
Park in every carpark
Say hi, give a pat on the shoulder, give a firm handshake, string your lips into a smile
Lies fill your teeth with cavities, arrogance is stuck up your nose
Friendly smiles are printed on every face registered as a business
We listen to our traffic lights and stop, we trust our calculators to count our money
The only signs we fail to heed when talking about feelings are the words we speak.]
The people of the city exchange greetings, handshakes, and smiles. However, their friendliness is superficial and all business. Human relationships are constructed on false signs. Nobody can truly be open with one another. Yeng goes on to depict the insignificant lives of self-important urbanites from a broad perspective:
我们生存，我们是一个节庆，一个假日
我们生存，我们是没有季候的风，是盲目的云
我们生存，我们佯装快乐，佯装忧郁
以及没有什么叫做甜蜜[We exist. We are a festive holiday, a public holiday
We exist. We are wind without a season, a cloud without vision
We exist. We pretend that we are happy, that we are sad
that there is no such thing as intimacy.]
To Yeng, urbanite lives are as insignificant as data points in a document and do not warrant a need for differentiation between individual selves. They toil furiously in their mediocrity, with only the next holiday to look forward to. In Yeng’s view, everything seems meaningless and pretentious about this way of living, with it having lost sight of the value of simply “being”.
Brushstrokes Gradually Becoming Gentler
Rootless String is Yeng’s second book of poems. In it, one can see a marked shift in Yeng’s style from being sharp and direct to becoming more tempered, though it still contains his usual critical disposition. Take for example the eponymous masterpiece:
告诉你我多寂寞
（那时是黄昏）
我伴着
一只异乡的白鸽
细读一则大标题的国际新闻
骤然想起尘封在书房里的史记
诗韵
和甲骨文[To tell you of how lonely I was,
(It was dusk, then)
I was accompanied
By a white dove from far away.
Reading closely a major headline in the international news
I suddenly recalled the records in my study, gathering dust,
Poetry
And oracle bones]
Here, the speaker seems to pre-empt the decline of the Chinese language in Singapore, causing him sorrow and a desire to lament. However, the speaker’s defiant spirit and courage to lead motivate him to persist in the direction of upholding it. In “Journey of the Confucian Scholar II”, he writes:
雾，重重的雾
在我驻守的滩头涌起
我们都不是善战的
兵卒，投枪锈了
匕首荒芜
偶尔还疲惫，颓唐地
在饥饿时零售脊骨
偶尔有
散发着腐朽的
气味，来自携于身旁的
书画琴棋[Fog, heavy fog
Rises at the beachhead where I am stationed.
None of us are warm to war.
Soldiers, rusted shotguns,
Barren daggers.
At times, we are still exhausted, dispirited.
When starving, we sell our spines.
On occasion, there is
The emitting of a rotten
Odour, coming from what we carry:
Calligraphy, paintings, zithers, Weiqi.]
The line “When starving, we sell our spines” symbolises those who lack a backbone and to satirise those unwilling to persevere, preferring to abandon their “roots”. The “rotten / Odour” of the “Calligraphy, paintings, zithers, Weiqi” also symbolises the neglect of the Chinese language. The poem’s conclusion also reads:
该来的总会来的
虽然仍是儒生，仍是书画琴棋。
而我们已不再是一条惶惑的河了，我们是
奔向大海的足迹
因为是寒夜
我们沉默着
把燃烧的火焰
静静的藏起[What should be will always be
Though there are still Confucian scholars, still calligraphy, paintings, zithers, Weiqi.
And we are no longer an anxious river, we are
Footsteps rushing to the sea
For it is a cold night
In silence, we
Take a burning flame
And quietly hide it]
While the poet is still willing to move through the fog, though he is unable to change hits broader environment, the flame is still only hidden, not extinguished.
Everyday Life was published in 2004 and within the span of 30 years, while Yeng’s attitude toward criticism remains the same, which can be seen as him retaining his stubbornness, the corners of his pen have been smoothened out. Yeng also begins to use metaphors to express his criticisms. Apart from his strong attachement to the Chinese language, Yeng also holds great aspirations toward freedom. In the poem “Forbidden Games” he writes:
你是活在蛋中，在这设计好的
堡垒里，在它提供给你的天空
千万别思索它的实质
它的内容或结构。[You live within an egg, within a well-designed
Fortress, within the sky it provides you,
Do not think too deeply about its substance,
Its content, nor its structure.]
The poem features an “egg” as an image, representing a highly regulated and closed world. People reside within this “egg” and are not permited to think or grow. Later on, the poem continues:
因为蛋的形状
是至善至美的形状。所以
不能思考蛋壳的实质
不能聆听蛋外的啁啾
不能，不能，绝对不能存有
长出羽毛、眼睛、耳朵、鼻子、嘴巴
诸如此类
荒谬的意图这是危险的游戏
是绝对禁止的[Because the shape of the egg
Is the most perfect and most beautiful shape. Therefore,
One cannot think about the egg shell’s substance
One cannot listening to chirping outside of the egg
One cannot, cannot, exist
Growing feathers, eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth,
Anything of the sort.
Absurd intentions. This is a dangerous game,
It is absolutely forbidden.]
Yeng uses the phrases “Absurd intentions”, “dangerous game”, and “absolutely forbidden” to describe a lost freedom.
Another example can be found in the poem “Accustomed”:
如果你习惯这精致贞洁的剧场，习惯
编导给你的性高潮
与华丽的乳房If you grow accustomed to this refined and chaste theatre, accustomed
To the orgasms given by the director
And sumptuous breasts
Then one would be able to
看见头顶上有一大片抒情的蓝天
[See that above you, there is a vast, lyrical, blue sky]
Every person just needs to imagine themselves as actors, receiving the instructions of a director well, which would then allow them to have promising paths ahead. On the contrary,
你的虚妄是你沸腾的热血
你的热血
是你最大的
哀伤[Your vanity is your hot blood that boils
Your hot blood
Is your greatest
Grief]
If one is unable to accept directions well, one’s path will be paved with thorns.
Reflections on the Impermanence of a Mundane Life
Stone is Yeng’s last poetry collection. While Yeng retained the poetic style of his early days, the subject matter of his poetry shifted toward self-expression and self-discovery. Without the former disapproving tone used to voice his inner thoughts, Yeng’s poems are a soothing, calming read that reveals profound revelations about life’s impermanence (Zhang, “A Clear Laugh, A Lonely Creator”, 2021). Take the anthology’s titular poem, in which Yeng writes:
我不孤独。我有林木
苍空、骄阳、星月、暴雨
以及一起体验快乐与艰辛的
你[I am not alone. I have the forests
the skies, the sun, the stars, the moon, the storms
and someone to share my joys and trials
I have you.]
Besides the expression of his gratitude to his wife for her constant companion and support over the years, this poem shows Yeng’s reflections on the life he had lived for the past few decades—one filled with bitterness and sweetness, joy and sorrow—and a suggestion that he had “let go” of certain obsessions.
“Stone” concludes with the lines:
没有人了解我与你
天长地久的爱
肌肤的亲密
没有人理解
日夜紧贴着你对抗这荒谬
是我们存在的
意义[No one understands you and me
our immutable love
our fleshly intimacy
No one understands
the days and nights spent in embrace, fighting this madness
This is what gives our lives
meaning]
In this final stanza, we catch a glimpse of a young Yeng—the impassioned, promising poet, the principled intellectual, and the critic of absurd lives. In his later years, instead of heated denouncements, Yeng turned to “words”—for which he had loved his entire life—as he aspired to leave himself and his loved ones a lasting gift.
Conclusion
Yeng Pway Ngon is an influential figure in Singapore’s literary community with a diverse range of publications. Despite the lengthy period of over four decades separating the publication of both poetry anthologies (the first edition of On the Operating Table was published in 1968), Yeng’s poems continue to reveal his deep concern for and consternation with worldly affairs as he explores and redefines “existence” through the lens of the lonely “self” and his literary works. The poet who penned impassioned words in On the Operating Table during the days of his nascent literary career, and shared his ruminations and expressions of love in Stone in his later years, will undoubtedly remain a constant, prominent figure in Singapore’s literary history.
Works cited
Teoh, Hee La. “A Clear Laugh, A Lonely Creator: Discussing Yeng Pway Ngon and his works”. Lianhe Zaobao. 28 May 2021.
Yeng, Pway Ngon. Everyday Life. Singapore. Grassroots Book Room. 2004.
Yeng, Pway Ngon. Rootless String. Singapore. Tea House Publishing House. 1974.
Yeng, Pway Ngon. On the Operating Table. Singapore. Grassroots Book Room. 1968. Reprinted in 1988.
Yeng, Pway Ngon. Stone. Singapore. City Book Room. 2020.
Zhang, Songjian. The Cultural Politics in the Postcolonial Era: Exploring Chinese Singaporean and Malaysian Literature. Singapore. Global Publishing. 2017.
